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War is not for winning, Masha, sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. It is for surviving.

Catherynne M. Valente

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Catherynne M. Valente
Age: 45
Born: 1979
Born: May 5
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Cat Valente
Winning
Tracks
Reading
Surviving
War
Shoulder
Supply
Shoulders
Strategy
Track
Sighed
Lines
Strategies

More quotes by Catherynne M. Valente

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That's Venus, September thought. She was the goddess of love. It's nice that love comes on first thing in the evening, and goes out last in the morning. Love keeps the light on all night.
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You only had to choose which me to talk to, for, you know, we all change our manners, depending on who has come to chat. One doesn’t behave at all the same way to a grandfather as to a bosom friend, to a professor as to a curious niece.
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Even if you’ve taken off every stitch of clothing, you still have your secrets, your history, your true name. It’s hard to be really naked. You have to work hard at it. Just getting into a bath isn’t being naked, not really. It’s just showing skin.
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Snow is the beginning and the end of everything.
Catherynne M. Valente
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All things are strange which are worth knowing.
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But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.
Catherynne M. Valente
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All jobs are odd, or they would be games or naps or picnics.
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You cannot escape where you come from, September. Some part of it remains inside you always, like the slender white heart in the center of the thickest onion.
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Your past's a private matter, sweetheart. You just keep it locked up in xbox where it can't hurt anyone.
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Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.
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Death stands behind every bride, every groom.
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Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb.
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But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.
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The man who knelt before her would have sprung from her needles, even down the ghostly flecks of silver in his hair. She had not known before that she wanted all these things, that she preferred dark hair and a slightly cruel expression, that she wishes for tallness, or that a man kneeling might thrill her.
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...For grace may only be found briefly, and always in the midst of madness.
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In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake and eat only what you can stomach.
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Someone ought to write a novel about me.
Catherynne M. Valente
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It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.
Catherynne M. Valente
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Koschei, Koschei,” she whispered. “What would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one I am nothing. I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. A machine for loving you. Nothing in me was not made by you.
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Hearts set about finding other hearts the moment they are born, and between them, they weave nets so frightfully strong and tight that you end up bound forever in hopeless knots, even to the shadow of a beast you knew and loved long ago.
Catherynne M. Valente